“Do you still dare stand by me, Kristin?”
“Yes, I still do,” she said, and after a moment, “We both bear the blame for this deed. I urged you on because I wanted her dead.”
Fru Aashild and Kristin stood and watched them go. The sleigh dipped down and rose up over the drifts. It vanished in a hollow, to appear farther down on a white meadow. But then the men passed into the shadow of a slope and disappeared for good.
The two women were sitting in front of the fireplace, their backs to the empty bed; Fru Aashild had taken out the bedclothes and straw. They both knew that it was standing there empty, gaping at them.
“Do you want us to sleep in the cookhouse tonight?” Fru Aashild asked.
“It makes no difference where we sleep,” said Kristin.
Fru Aashild went outside to look at the weather.
“No, it doesn’t matter whether a storm blows in or a thaw comes; they won’t get far before the truth comes out,” said Kristin.
“It always blows here at Haugen,” replied Fru Aashild. “There’s no sign of a break in the weather.”
Then they sat in silence again.
“You mustn’t forget what fate she had intended for the two of you,” said Fru Aashild.
Kristin said softly, “I keep thinking that in her place I might have wanted to do the same.”
“You would never have wanted to cause another person to become a leper,” said Fru Aashild staunchly.
“Do you remember, Aunt, you once told me that it’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”
“You didn’t dare because it was a sin,” said Fru Aashild.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Kristin. “I’ve done many things that I thought I would never dare do because they were sins. But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.”
“Erlend wanted to mend his ways long before he met you,” replied Aashild vehemently. “It was over between those two.”
“I know that,” said Kristin, “but she probably never had reason to believe that Erlend’s plans were so firm that she wouldn’t be able to change them.”
“Kristin,” pleaded Fru Aashild fearfully, “you won’t give up Erlend now, will you? The two of you can’t be saved unless you save each other.”
“That’s hardly what a priest would say,” said Kristin, smiling coldly. “But I know that I won’t let go of Eriend—even if I have to trample on my own father.”
Fru Aashild stood up.
“We might as well keep ourselves busy instead of sitting here like this,” she said. “It would probably be useless for us to try to go to bed.”
She brought the butter churn from the storeroom, carried in some basins of milk, and filled it up; then she took up her position to churn.
“Let me do that,” begged Kristin. “I have a younger back.”
They worked without talking. Kristin stood near the storeroom door and churned, and Aashild carded wool over by the hearth. Not until Kristin had strained out the churn and was forming the butter did she suddenly say, “Aunt Aashild—aren’t you ever afraid of the day when you have to face God’s judgment?”
Fru Aashild stood up and went over to stand in front of Kristin in the light.
“Perhaps I’ll have the courage to ask the one who created me, such as I am, whether He will have mercy on me when the time comes. For I have never asked for His mercy when I went against His commandments. And I have never asked God or man to return one penning of the fines I’ve had to pay here in my earthly home.”
A moment later she said quietly, “Munan, my eldest son, was twenty years old. Back then he wasn’t the way I know him to be now. They weren’t like that then, those children of mine …”
Kristin replied softly, “And yet you’ve had Herr Bj?rn by your side every day and every night all these years.”
“Yes,” said Aashild, “that I have.”
A little later Kristin was done with forming the butter. Then Fru Aashild said that they ought to try lying down for a while.
In the dark bed she put her arm around Kristin’s shoulder and pulled the girl’s head toward her. And it wasn’t long before she could hear by her even and quiet breathing that Kristin was asleep.
CHAPTER 4
THE FROST HUNG ON. In every stable of the village the starving animals lowed and complained, suffering from the cold. But the people were already rationing the fodder as best they could.